AHS Comparative Government

Russian armed forces invaded southeastern Ukraine Thursday, with the apparent objective of seizing Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and establishing a land corridor between southern Russia and the Crimean Peninsula.  (Last March, Russia forcibly annexed the Crimean Peninsula, then part of Ukraine, in violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances).

Russia's invasion of southeastern Ukraine also opens a new front in Ukraine's conflict with Russia, forcing Ukraine to divert weapons and troops from its efforts to suppress a pro-Russian separatist insurrection further north.  Russia has helped fuel that insurrection, by providing weapons to militias comprised of Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine who are seeking to make their region of Ukraine a part of Russia.  (The United States and its NATO allies have provided what they characterize as "non-lethal" aid to the Ukrainian government's efforts to quell the rebellion).  This BBC image depicts the area of the fighting in eastern Ukraine; in southeastern Ukraine, the city of Novoazovsk is now in Russian hands and Russian forces are advancing on Mariupol:






Speaking to a group of his young political supporters on Friday, Russian President Putin likened the Ukrainian government's efforts to suppress the rebellion in eastern Ukraine to the siege of Leningrad during World War II.  The memory of that siege, in which Leningrad held out against the German military while nearly a third of its residents starved to death, has an emotional resonance in Russia that is almost impossible for Americans to understand.  Putin is using powerful emotional imagery to gain public support in Russia for his policies -- and for his increasingly autocratic regime:

http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Russian-backed-rebels-aim-to-push-west-along-5722597.php

In the past 25 years, 250 million people have moved from rural China to China's growing cities.  Almost all of this immigration has been illegal: in China, one must have official permission to change one's place of residence.  Life in Chinese cities is hard for illegal migrants; they lack access to many social services, including some educational services for their children.

For example, most Chinese teenagers who are legal residents of large cities complete the equivalent of high school.  Chinese teenagers whose parents live illegally in big cities are expected to attend high school in or near their parents' home villages.  But high school attendance rates in rural areas are low, in large part because rural high school students often must pay both tuition and boarding expenses.  Only a third of Chinese teenagers in rural areas start high school -- and many of them drop out before they finish.  This disparity in high school completion rates both perpetuates class inequality in China and inhibits the country's efforts to become a producer of technologically sophisticated goods and services:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21613293-many-teenagers-chinese-countryside-do-not-finish-secondary-school-bodes-ill 

To combat organized crime in Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto has established a new branch of the Federal Police.  In theory, the new police unit, to be known as the National Gendarmerie, will function like France's Gendarmerie Nationale: it will be a military unit tasked with civilian policing responsibilities.  Critics, however, argue that the new agency will do little more than add 5,000 officers to the Federal Police; they argue that the National Gendarmerie will neither reform Mexico's corrupt state and local police forces or allow Peña Nieto to relieve the Mexican Army from the policing responsibilities it was assigned when former President Felipe Calderón declared war on Mexico's narco-traffickers:

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21613312-mexico-gets-new-police-force-it-needs-new-policing-strategy-feds-ride-out

Nigeria, with a population of 120 million, is the most populous country in Africa.  An article in this week's issue of The Economist examines the country's great economic potential -- and the significant challenges that confront foreign businesses that invest in Nigeria:

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21613341-make-it-big-africa-business-must-succeed-nigeria-continents-largest-market-no

In China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, 45.2% of the population is Uyghur, while 40.6% of the population is Han Chinese. The Uyghurs are a Central Asian ethnic group. They speak a Turkic language; most practice Sufi Islam (a branch of Sunni Islam). Several Uyghur separatist groups have operated in Xinjiang in recent years; some have carried out acts of violence against Chinese officials and Chinese troops stationed in the region. In July 2009, mobs of Uyghurs attacked Han Chinese residents of Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital; several days later, gangs of Han Chinese attacked Uyghur Urumqi residents. According to the Chinese government, 197 people were killed in the Urumqi riots; Uyghur exile groups contend that the actual death toll was far higher.

In recent decades, the Chinese government has resettled hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese in Xinjiang, in order to tie the region more closely to the rest of China. (Sixty years ago, less than 10% of the population of Xinjiang was Han Chinese). In many parts of Xinjiang, Han Chinese residents live in settlements separate from the towns and villages where the Uyghurs (and other residents of Central Asian ancestry) live. The Han settlements have their own schools, hospitals, police forces and courts; each settlement also has its own militia, which helps ensure the authority of the Chinese government in the region.

In May 2013, The Economist warned that the establishment and growth of Han settlements in Xinjiang, and the segregation of Han Chinese from Uyghurs in the region, was stoking resentment and separatist agitation among Xinjiang's Uyghur population.  This analysis has been borne out: terrorist attacks by Uyghur separatists against Han Chinese civilians, in Xinjiang and in other places in China, have become more common.  Moreover, Chinese government efforts to suppress the growing violence appear only to be adding fuel to the fire.  This week, The Economist warns that Xinjiang risks becoming China's Chechnya -- and notes that Uyghur separatism is beginning to take on the rhetoric and tactics of jihadist extremism:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21611110-new-episodes-violence-and-repression-have-heightened-tensions-xinjiang-spreading-net

The outbreak of Ebola virus, which has so far claimed more than 900 lives in four west African countries, has spread to Lagos, Nigeria, the largest city in Africa.  So far, all of the Ebola cases in Nigeria are among medical personnel who treated Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American who became ill on a flight to Lagos from Liberia.  Sawyer and one of the nurses who treated him have since died; five other hospital staff members are now ill with the disease.  At the moment, the outbreak in Lagos is relatively contained: all of those known to be infected had direct contact with Sawyer.  Nonetheless, the prospect of a general outbreak of Ebola -- which kills between 70% and 90% of those it infects -- in Lagos, a city of 21 million, is alarming:

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Nigerian-Health-Minister-says-nurse-died-of-Ebola-5671456.php

Sex outside of marriage is illegal in Iran.  Adultery and homosexual conduct are punishable by death; fornication (sex between an unmarried man and woman) is punishable by public flogging.  A recent report published by the Research Department of Iran's Majles (Parliament), however, finds that sex outside of marriage -- including gay sex -- is surprisingly common among young Iranians.  To address the problem of heterosexual sex outside of marriage, the report advocates encouraging greater use of the traditional practice of temporary marriage.  Temporary marriages -- which can last from a few minutes to 99 years -- are permitted in Shi'ite Islam and legal in Iran, though they generally meet with social disapproval:

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21611117-official-report-blows-lid-secret-world-sex-throwing

Amnesty International has issued a report accusing the Nigerian Army of committing atrocities in its campaign against the insurgent group Boko Haram.  Among other things, the report alleges that Nigerian Army personnel slit the throats of a group of young men and boys who had been detained as suspected Boko Haram fighters.

Western and Nigerian analysts have long warned that the heavy-handed tactics used by the Nigerian Army against Boko Haram were creating public support for the group in northeastern Nigeria, and were actually helping Boko Haram recruit fighters:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28651767

Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to destabilize eastern Ukraine militarily have resulted in the imposition, by the United States and its allies in Europe, of trade and investment sanctions against Russian state-owned banks and enterprises.  These sanctions will weaken the already stagnant Russian economy, thereby eventually costing Putin political support.  Why then is Putin continuing to fuel a violent secessionist rebellion in eastern Ukraine?

The Russian media -- which Putin largely controls -- has framed the conflict in eastern Ukraine as a struggle between ethnic Russian freedom fighters and a neo-fascist Ukrainian central government.  Accordingly, Putin's adventurism in eastern Ukraine enjoys broad public support in Russia.  Defying the United States and its allies by continuing to support the separatists in eastern Ukraine has made Putin more popular with the Russian public than he has been in some years; backing down in Ukraine, on the other hand, could be fatal to the Putin regime:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21610322-cost-vladimir-putins-gamble-ukraine-going-up-he-shows-no-sign-changing

In the past two years, more than 200,000 public officials have been punished in Chinese President Xi Jinping's crackdown on corruption.  Although Xi sees official corruption as a mortal threat to the Chinese Communist Party's continued governance of China, the crackdown has had the not coincidental effect of making Xi the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping led the country in the 1980s and early 1990s.

This week, the Chinese Communist Party announced that Zhou Yongkang was under investigation for corruption.  Zhou is believed to be under house arrest.  Until late 2012, Zhou was a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party's Political Bureau (Politburo), and was thus one of the most powerful men in the country; indeed, Zhou was in charge of Chinese internal security.  While members and former members of the Politburo Standing Committee have been purged and put on trial in the past (typically for "anti-Party activities"), Zhou is the first current or former member of the Standing Committee ever to be investigated for corruption:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21610313-carrying-out-most-significant-purge-generation-xi-jinping-seeks-tighten-his-grip-no